Sneak Peek: Marked by Magic

Lon gaped up at a gigantic version of Nosy, who stared back down at him with dog-breathed curiosity.

“Rogues and road apples! What just happened?”

The gruff voice didn’t come from Nosy.

Lon took a quick inventory of all the weirdness going on:

The giant Nosy. Lon loved his dog, but twice the size of a Clydesdale horse was too much puppy for anyone.

The crazy tall, wide grass. Never in a million years would he let it grow this high. His allowance depended on it.

The large group of blue-skinned people standing nearby wearing fancy costumes. Halloween ended five months ago.

Livi was being quiet.

That did it. Too much weirdness.

“What is going on?!” he bellowed.

“That’s what I just asked,” said a tubby, bearded, blue-skinned man in a king costume.

Lon pulled Livi closer to him in a protective side hug. “Who are you?”

The man’s face flushed beet purple, as if he were choking on a pickle instead of rage, but before he could respond, a large white bird swooped down and hovered, flapping its wings silently. Lon blinked and looked closer. It wasn’t a bird after all, but a huge, white butterfly thing with a human head.

Lon felt like both his eyes and mouth were stuck in the wide-open position as he studied the “fairy godmother,” who raised herself a little higher and held out her hands in an appeasing gesture. She looked like the beautiful, porcelain dolls his grandmother collected. Her body was slender, and her brown hair formed a wispy knot on the top of her head, and her wings looked as if she’d fallen into a sack of powdered sugar. She blinked her enormous round, blue eyes and smiled with the daintiest lips he had ever seen.

“Your Majesty, there’s been a terrible mistake!” said the fairy in a honey-smooth voice.